Blogs

The Musings blog is the space where our team of design and business thinkers comes together to share what inspires us. We'll discuss all things design thinking, from customer ethnography to rapid prototyping to innovation strategy and beyond.

States are temporary. Traits endure. Synaptic
connections are the bridge between them. Because neurons that fire together,
wire together.

From these four biological assertions, good service design
has the potential to help users magically rewire their brains to change their
behavior for the better. The process
goes something like this:

IF

We design experiences that induce new states of mind …

That trigger new neural activity …

And have positive behavioral outcomes

And if we provide mechanisms
to prolong those states (by as little as 10 seconds!) …

THEN

We can help people “install” the synaptic connections

Such that (temporary) states
turn into (enduring) traits.

Now, doesn’t that sound like what great service designers
do? And you may have guessed that Step 4
is the magic step. Hanson calls it
“Taking the Good,” and it’s a big challenge because are brains are wired to
cling to bad outcomes (an evolutionary
mechanism known as negativity bias). As
Hanson notes, “our brains are Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good
ones.”

Good service design— especially services that wish to
support behavior change— must account for mechanisms to support Taking the
Good, that is, for building Velcro to hold positive experiences. It’s a key to the learning process.